What we can all learn from YouTube’s programmatic advertising kerfuffle

As programmatic advertising plays an increasingly large role in marketers’ campaign strategies, agencies and their clients have learned it’s not a perfectly-targeted medium – yet. Over the past few weeks, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T and other heavyweight brands around the world have put a hold on digital advertising with Google’s YouTube. The reason? Programmatic YouTube ads have been appearing next to offensive content, causing alarm across the marketing industry and forcing companies to approach targeted digital advertising with caution.

So, what’s the fix?

Google’s been quick to respond, beginning by revamping their existing policies for monitoring and removing offensive YouTube content, as well as exploring new methods for giving advertisers control over their programmatic content. As new hyper-local tools join the marketer’s toolbox and social channels invest in developing highly-targeted advertising solutions, it’s safe to say many advertising solution providers are learning from YouTube’s misstep. For advertisers, this doesn’t mean programmatic advertising should be banned forever, but rather marketing teams should ensure they know where their ads will appear and ask what the delivery provider’s protocols are for preventing PR-crisis-causing content to crash their campaign.